A Quick Trip to Santa Barbara

Taking advantage of a work trip to California, I made a quick jaunt from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara to squeeze in two tasting room visits. I had had one bottle from Jaffurs Winery eight or nine years ago and was interested in revisiting, and had never tried but was eager to explore the strongly reputed Au Bon Climat. Neither disappointed, and I didn’t even tell them I was coming. I strongly recommend trying wines from both wineries who also represent off-the-charts value. My tasting notes are at the end of the post.

Jaffurs is a warehouse winery that hosts its tasting room in the middle of the crush pad. I love these set ups for a host of reasons, the main one being that it smells, well, like a crush pad, and I love that smell because it reminds of the joys and challenges of making wine. It also removes any of the ultimately damaging air of aristocratic pomposity many tasting rooms, unfortunately, achieve.

Jaffurs Winery

I was the first customer of the day, and a man named David saddled me up to the tasting bar and poured five wines for me while discussing the winery’s approach and impressive array of vineyard relationships. Jaffurs has been around for over 20 years and seem to be a local legend. They focus on Rhone varietals, and offer multi-vineyard blends plus a lineup of single vineyard syrahs, and the wines are evidence enough of why Jaffurs has such a good reputation among the industry.

Au Bon Climat’s tasting room is in downtown Santa Barbara, an almost idyllic setting that no doubt influences customers’ experience. I was also their first visitor of their day and Emily, the assistant tasting room manager, poured me a very good flight of six wines that mostly exceed my expectations. Emily’s personable nature and obvious zeal for the winery and industry was a great compliment to the wine. The tasting room, as Emily explained, was really a showroom for Jim Clendenen, the man behind Au Bon Climat and a number of other efforts. Clendenen focus is on taking what is clearly fantastic fruit and making the more refined, Burgundian and Italian styles of wine.

Clendenen Family Estate Vineyard

It isn’t fair to offer scores of wines tasted in a tasting room – the pours are too small to fully analyze the wine, and often times the wines haven’t received sufficient aeration. Therefore, I’m going to relay the notes on the wines that I scribbled down while tasting, but leave out scores are values. That said, I imagine all the wines I tasted would likely score at or above 90 points and receive values of at least a “B” based on my process.

2014 Syrah: blend from several vineyards, meant to be a consistent profile from vintage to vintage. A bit chewy, full bodied but with good acidity. Dark fruits with some fungal funk and a nice black pepper kick.

2012 Talley Vineyard pinot noir: big, bold and fruit nose with some florals. Body is framed with significant oak, smoke and salty red fruits. Big mushroom on the finish. This could be great in 5-10 years.

2010 Nebbiolo Bricco Buon Natale: very perfumed and tropical nose with a dose of kerosene. Palate is really nice and soft, but the body is substantial. Spiced red berries and beautiful candied plums with black pepper. Gorgeous, also world class. I’ll be enjoying the several bottles I purchased.